Romain Dillet

Originally from France, Romain attended EMLYON Business School, a leading French business school specialized in entrepreneurship. He covers many things from mobile apps with great design to complex tech achievements. He also speaks at major tech conferences. He likes pop culture more than anything in the world.

He now lives in Paris to help build the tech ecosystem. He likes to cover European startups as well as New York startups as he used to live there.

Latest from Romain Dillet

Right after LG’s press conference at CES, we got our hands on the newly announced LG G Flex 2. LG’s new flagship smartphone’s killer feature is its curved form factor that is supposed to resist bending.
The phone falls into the phablet category with its gigantic 5.5-inch display. But it was much easier to grab than an iPhone 6 Plus. The curved form factor is a nice addition… Read More

LG is about to announce its latest flagship smartphone, the G Flex 2. It bends! That’s the big news.
But don’t get too excited. The new bendy LG phone is more of an assurance that the G Flex 2 is durable. Yet, the bend itself doesn’t promise added functionality of any sort. However, durability is clearly a focal point. However you bend the phone, LG promises that the phone… Read More

I’ve written about ISKN in the past. It’s a simple slate that tracks your pen and paper sketches. It transforms your drawings into vectorial images in real time. The company just snatched $2 million in funding from Partech Ventures, CEA Investments, Kima Ventures and Pascal Cagni. But more importantly, ISKN works shockingly well.
When I first met the ISKN team last year, I… Read More

French startup Lima is presenting another piece of its offering at CES, the mobile app. And it is a very promising app for those who backed Lima to seamlessly access their photos, music library and movies from their phones and tablets. While the team still needs to polish the app interface, it goes beyond Dropbox and Carousel when it comes to features.
As a reminder, Lima is a small device… Read More

Next week will be my first CES. Over the past couple of months, when I talked with CES veterans, they all told me that CES is a horrible experience. And yet, I am still incredibly excited. I plan to take advantage of my fresh perspective on the show to share my experience over the next few days.
But first, let’s start with figuring out why everybody keeps telling me that CES is a mess. Read More

2014 was an amazing year in startup news. In fact, we wrote more than 13,000 articles here on TechCrunch. That’s why we are giving you a handy TL;DR guide to remind you of all the big news from the past year.
Apple: We predict that large phones will be the next big thing.
WhatsApp: Sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of all the $$$$.
Amazon: Remember that one time we built… Read More

French dating app Happn just raised an $8 million Series A round from Alven Capital and DN Capital, as well as business angels, such as Fabrice Grinda. As a reminder, Happn uses your phone’s location to show you potential matches. Every time you cross someone’s path, this person’s profile will be added to the top of your feed. Then, you can like people and potentially… Read More

French Uber competitor SnapCar just raised $2.5 million (€2 million) from business angels, such as former global CEO of American Express Travel Charles Petruccelli and Bertrand Mabille. While the company already has more than 200 corporate clients, it is focusing on B2B for good.
SnapCar works more or less the same way as competitiors, such as Chauffeur-Privé, LeCab and Uber, but… Read More

Voice Polls has come a long way. Formerly named Poutsch, the startup is moving away from its consumer-only focus to create an interesting market research tool. With the 2.0 release, you can pay to ask a panel of users, and users can now get paid to answer these polls.
First, let’s talk about the product. Voice Polls is now available on iOS, Android and the web. It’s a simple… Read More

Vidcoin is an advertising technology startup focused on video ads for smartphones. The French startup makes watching video ads less painful by providing an SDK that will buffer videos before playing them so that they will instantly play.
“Mobile video continues to be a challenge for one simple reason: mobile connectivity can be spotty so the type of streaming videos [companies like… Read More

Meet Addr, a brand new iPad app to read your ePub ebooks. In some way, Addr is very reminiscent of Readmill’s now defunct ebook reader. It’s all about importing your DRM-free ebooks and adding a social layer to take annotations and share them with your friends.
But the comparison stops there as Addr is a very different take when it comes to design. First, the app goes a bit… Read More

There is nothing as cool as riding a high-speed train across Europe. But buying train tickets is also one of the worst online experiences. French startup Capitaine Train is all about making this process as seamless and complete as possible. The company just raised another $6.3 million (€5.5 million) to expand its activities. Read More

Coding bootcamps are nothing new, but they have always been more popular in the U.S. than in Europe. Last year, when Le Wagon started, it was a breath of fresh air. The team not only wanted to bring the concept back to Europe, but also wanted to add its own flavor. Le Wagon is a coding school specifically targeted towards entrepreneurs. It designs its own high quality content to make you… Read More

The two co-founders behind AppGratis are working on a new project for mobile developers. Batch Insights is a push notification aggregator that will let you search, filter and manipulate notifications from thousands of popular apps. This service is a good way to benchmark your competitors when it comes to push notifications.
“With Batch Insights we’re on a mission to index all… Read More

I’ve been using my Doxie Go scanner for the past two years. It’s a portable scanner small enough to keep in a drawer for when you need it. Doxie just updated its flagship scanner with not one but two new models — the Doxie Go Plus and the Doxie Go Wi-Fi.
The Doxie Go Plus, as the name suggests, is an improved version of the scanner. The company claims that image quality has… Read More

Remember the last time you went to the same coffee shop or bar because the staff tends to play music you like and you don’t have to pick the next song? Prizm is a neat little pyramid add-on for your sound system to transform your living room into this coffee shop you like. The French startup is just beginning the last week of its Kickstarter campaign of its $129 smart music player for… Read More

Scheduling a meeting usually takes a few emails. Add a third person, and you are now stuck in an email nightmare. French startup Vyte.in knows this too well, and will let you schedule meetings in a few clicks right in your browser.
“I’ve worked for 4 years in big companies and small startups — from the smallest to the biggest company, you always have this problem when it comes… Read More

Meet Glose, a brand new ebook reader for your phone, tablet and laptop. Glose is like the Kindle apps, but on steroids. Reading a book in Glose becomes a collective experience as you can discuss quotes with your friends and other Glose users, keep notes and more. You can also browse a feed of your friend’s annotations to get a taste of books you have yet to read. At heart, the team wants… Read More

Sunrise has been one of my favorite mobile apps for years now. But the brand new 3.0 update for iOS, combined with iOS 8, makes it one of the best examples of a good iOS 8 widget for the Today view. In one swipe, I can now view my upcoming events and all-day events. As a reminder, Sunrise works with iCloud calendars, Google Calendar and Microsoft Exchange.
There are also a few other… Read More

A couple of years ago, the team behind Online Labs started a long ambitious project — instead of building a virtual cloud hosting infrastructure that competes directly with Amazon Web Services, DigitalOcean and other VPS providers, it designed its own hardware for its cloud solution. Online Labs managed to squeeze 912 separate computers in a single server rack. But the best part is that… Read More